Tuesday, 21 May 2013

Make private charity pay for OK tornado damage

Okay, all you inflamed campaigners against big gummint and its horrors: where’s the cash now that the ferociously anti-state Oklahomans need up to $2 billion to repair the storm damage?

In response to any suggestion that there might be a role for the commonweal to play in making people’s lives better, we get a howl of indignation from the official Christians in places like, um, Oklahoma about how good old-fashioned neighborliness can do a much better job than any old bureaucracy. So okay, people, it’s time to start baking those pies and oh, incidentally, also to pony up the thousands of dollars per household that will be needed to rebuild the schools, fix the roads and bail out the homeless of Moore.

Since no doubt everyone will joyfully make that contribution from their cookie jars, there will be no need for onerous tolls collected by an impersonal state. In the marvy Utopia of stateless Oklahoma, we will simply have to pass the basket at the next PTA meeting so that people can gladly drop in a 100-dollar bill or so each week until, let’s say, 2015. Right?

If this sounds nutty, consider that the state’s two senators, Coburn and Imhofe, have voted repeatedly against any federal aid for Hurricane Sandy victims. Perhaps they’ll have a different idea now that the damage isn’t on the eastern seaboard but in the Tornado Alley that runs through their home towns.

But for consistency’s sake, they should be refusing all that vile federal dough drawn from hard-working taxpayers. Or are they afraid that Oklahomans aren’t so Christian after all when it comes to parting with their cash?